The integration is Microsoft’s monopoly behaviour which anti-trust organisation no longer put a stop to. There are alternatives but they struggle to match the level of integration Microsoft can achieve owning and making all of the office suite.

However European local and regional government have been moving over to Office alternatives such as Collabora, Onlyoffice and Libreoffice. Collabora & Onlyoffice are particularly designed for online use and collaboration.

There are also alternatives to the Exchange email system, with Nextcloud one of a few that can either be bought as a service or self deployed by organisations and individuals.

The biggest benefits are total control and privacy of data, plus better cost. Microsoft clients don’t generally get any of this, with the increasing push to integrate online services and try to forcably up-sell by bundling in stuff customers don’t need but have to buy to get the things they want or need. Microsoft rely on inertia and vendor lock-in; once you become dependent on their services it makes it seem impossible to get out and move to a new system.

PCs are generally based around the X86 chip architecture which is an open standard. PCs are basically modular and lots of manufacturers make components that are interchangeable, creating a huge variety of possible hardware. Hardware suppliers also sell to both big manufacturing companies and individuals. It’s therefore in their interest to distribute their drivers freely even if closed source. If hardware breaks it can be replaced and the PC keeps going, and some components can be kept going for years as a result as people dot have to throw the whole machine out everything something breaks or becomes obsolete.

Mobile devices are closed standards. They use a more limited range of off the shelf components which are deeply integrated into a device, and the hardware suppliers provide their drivers to the device manufacturer or the device manufacturer builds their own drivers and custom version of the os. Hardware can have very long retail lives selling for years and still being functional, so the manufacturers have an incentive to keep drivers available and even update them.

It means mobile devices are more locked down, and the hardware drivers harder to come by. This makes it hard to build custom OS for them and therefore when the device comes to the end of its support from the maker there is limited options to keep it running securely.

It’s effectively a type of planned obscelence that keeps the mobile industry going. Manufacturers stop supporting old devices (because it provides no income) and then consumers have to buy new ones as no one can provide the security patches to keep them secure.

So for mobile there is nothing to force Android or IOS to be kept up to date for old devices. The money is in new devices, and for Android manufacturers are responsible for the mobile device anyway. While for PC it’s in Microsofts interests to keep updating and keeping devices secure via Windows becuase devices have long lifespans and old components can be in the PC ecosystem for decades. Similarly Linux is able to support hardware for a long time because drivers are more freely available and long lifespans to hardware incentivise people to put the effort in to write open drivers when they’re not there.

Microsoft is trying to force an upgrade cycle at the moment with Win 11 though. And the laptop industry ia more like the mobile industry than the desktop pc industry with more propriety devices and locked down hardware.

As someone else has said; important to check the model number for the offical guide but if its a LAPQC71 (A, B, C or D) then this covers it: https://manualmachine.com/intel/bqc71abbu6000/8104213-user-manual/

The slots look to be hidden behind your hand in your photo.

The guide says its made for an 80 mm NVME (i.e. 2280). You look to be holding a 42mm (2242) or 60mm (2260) which is too short. There could be screw holes there that aren’t documented but if not you’d have to get an adaptor to extend the length of the NVME to fit. Far better would be to get a drive the right length.

NVME 2242, 2260 and 2280 are all the same in terms of the connection, the only difference is the board length. The longer ones can potentially fit more memory on them so are “better” (good in full desktops for example where there is plenty of space) while the 2242 are designed to fit into smaller spaces like laptops or miniPCs. This laptop seems to be supporting the longer slots which is actually good but unfortunately it may mean your card is not going to be big enough.

It’s always worth reading the manual before upgrade components as it will tell you exactly what slots are available and what standards are supported. There are 2 NVME slots - 1 is NVME only, the other can support NVME and SATA.

Yeah that looks right assuming its the right model; compared to the diagram in the quick start guide, in the picture he’s covering the area where the slots are with his hand and the drive hes holding. This quide for the same model numbers is the same: https://manualmachine.com/intel/bqc71abbu6000/8104213-user-manual/

OP needs to check his model number.

Unfortunately the guide suggests it only supports 80mm length (2280) NVME drives. There could be a screw hole for the 42mm or 60mm sizes but they’re not mentioned. It may be the NVME he has is too small for the design of the laptop. OP is holding what looks like a 2242?

There are adaptors (e.g. on ebay) to add length to a shorter drive to fit into the slot, but the ideal is to buy the right size of the slot.

Maybe remind him of that when he’s rude like this. He’s bitching at you for not doing him a favour - taking it for granted. And then insulting you for your choice in shower gel.

He cones across as a bit of an asshat.

Its a glitch.

Its important to understand that evolution does not “design” anything with intent or purpose. Its all chance and survival of the fittest does select for traits that confer greater survival.

But plenty of traits are neutral or minimally negative in their survival benefits so also suriviveor develop. And it only affects traits that impact reproducing and passing on traits to the next generation. So many traits may be totally unaffected by evolutionary pressures as they have no relevance to survival of the fittest.

Plus the other species being competed woth over time and the environment generally shape what traits are desirable versus detrimental.

Basically not everything has an evolutionary purpose or function.

So no this is not safe. Once ypu have a system it is easier to crack because if someone has 2 or more of your passwords they can work out there is a system and it’d make it much easier to crack others if they’re determined.

It is unlikely that someone random would specifically target a person and systematically try and crack their passwords. If that were to happen it’d most likely he someone they know - and this does happen sometimes. So while the passwords are definitely flawed it may not be something that anyone takes the time to exploit. But you can never say never.

The best way to manage passwords probably remains a secure password manager and randomly generated series of characters for each site. If its truly random then there are no shortcuts and every single password stands independently. The password manager gets round the issue of memorising them.

Except the big danger with fully self driving cars is that drivers are not paying attention at all as they have nothing to do most of the time. They’ll be on their phones regardless of what theyre supposed to do and that will cause deaths. So such a glaring safety flaw will have numerous opportunities to happen in real life - humans do not make good safety features in cars; thats what the self drive stuff was for.

Teslas self drive technology is not fit for the roads regardless of this. Musk had sensors stripped out pf the cars design to save money because apparently he knows better than all the worlds self drive engineers. The guy is a just an investment bro woth a huge ego - he can’t let the people hes investing in get onwith it, because he sees himself as a “genius”. The guys a moron.

I work in healthcare in a specialist field, and the best are not the ones who get recognised. The ones who get recognised chase respect and fame - in healthcare that is going to conferences and speaking, and writing as many papers as possible.

But the best people in my field are the ones who do the actual job each day at an extremely high level. They go unrecognised except by those of us who understand what it takes to be good. They’re humble and focused. Some of them for sure go and speak at conferences and publish papers etc but its not those things that make them the best, although those are the only those things that make them “visible” outside their place of work.

The same goes for music and actors. The most famous are not necessarily the best. They are the ones who people like or are the most commercial etc. The best singers are not necessairly world famous - they may be working professionally in less popular sectors such as opera or classical music or choirs, or they may be totally amateur. Similarly the best actors may be strutting a stage somewhere and never seen in a movie or tv show by the majority of the world. And even then they may be the “star”.

Fame and notoriety has get little to do with talent - some famous people are undoubtedly near the top of their field but it is far from required.

Stack Overflow, like Reddit, derives its value entirely from its users—it’s just a host. Now that users (and their knowledge) are moving elsewhere, the platform’s importance is fading.

It’s odd when people worry about Stack Overflow’s decline. Online communities have always shifted: from BBSs and newsgroups to forums, chat, Yahoo Groups, Reddit, and Stack Overflow. Each had its time.

The next gathering spot for tech-savvy users might be the fediverse, but who knows at this point. AI isn’t solely to blame for the shift—people moved to Stack Overflow because it was better than what came before. Now, as it declines in quality thanks to general enshittification of services as companies try to monetise uaers, they’re moving on again.

I’m not sure why this is being downvoted—you’re absolutely right.

The current AI hype focuses almost entirely on LLMs, which are just one type of model and not well-suited for many of the tasks big tech is pushing them into. This rush has tarnished the broader concept of AI, driven more by financial hype than real capability. However, LLM limitations don’t apply to all AI.

Neural network models, for instance, don’t share the same flaws, and we’re still far from their full potential. LLMs have their place, but misusing them in a race for dominance is causing real harm.

It is an absolute crock of shit.

There is plenty of research on magnetism and humans and it doesnt need a new title and niche “research” from a frankly failed state like Russia.

We use high Tesla fields routinely every day worldwide in hospitals in Magnetic Resonance Imaging. Safety of this technology has been and is continuously investigated. There has also been extensive investigation of magnetic fields related to power lines and other use cases.

There does remain some uncertainty and controversy around potential effects of long term exposure to low T electromagnetic fields but its long established that short term exposure is safe.

This “research” is more on the realm of autism vaccine science. A lot of money can be made in niche fake sciences both in the industry of research itself and then the crap they can sell to ignorant people as a result.

Russia as a state has been systematically destroyed over the past few decades and most of its institutions have a terrible reputation now. While there are undoubtedly still good scientists in the country, they are working in a gangster state and many of the best minds have long fled for better opportunities abroad.

I wonder why Apache continues to support OpenOffice. Its barely moved since 2014 and hasn’t even had a security update since 2023. They could archive it as an active project (keep the code available for those who want it) and redirect most users who land on the OpenOffice site to LibreOffice.

I’m not sure this true - PDF is an open standard. The issue isn’t generally with layout and reproducibility - a good PDF maker and a good reader will give you an accurate representation of how it looks on all devices once the PDF is created.

Certainly there isn’t a dedicated FOSS tool for make PDFs; Libre Office and Inkscape do a decent job but not perfect which may be what you’re referring to. And they’re not dedicated PDF makers plus the real problem is building fillable forms and signature tools.

But there is a proprietary alternative called Master PDF that is a dedicated and supports all the PDF standard features I believe; one perpetual license is $80 compared to Adobe subscription based charging. I’m not aware of other options myself but they may exist. But it’s a viable alternative to the “adobe tax”.

Also of course if you have Office 365 from Microsoft, you can use Word to export docs to PDF reliably (in my experience). Obviously as far as you can get from FOSS, but it is an option on Linux via web browser if you have it from work for example; at least you don’t have to pay Adobe but it’s scraping the bottom of the barrel for this threat I know!

Firefox can do basic annotating, adding text and adding pictures but it can’t make a new PDF from scratch.

You may be confusing Adobe Acrobat Reader with Adobe Acrobat? Full Acrobat is the proprietary tool to make a PDF file from scratch including some of the more complex functions.

PDF is an open standard and has been for a while, so there are now plenty of alternatives for most of the functions. LibreOffice Draw and Inkscape can do a lot of PDF creation functions but not all. There are also “print to PDF” options to create basic PDF documents too.

However some of the more niche functions are not widely supported or well supported; and there isn’t really any opensource dedicated PDF maker that I’m aware of. Layout tools are abundant but I think it’s things like building forms and document signing that is less easily replicated. There is Master PDF - a fully functional PDF maker which is proprietary and available for Linux; it $80 for a perpetual license. I’m not aware of any other alternatives myself.

“Anyone” is a bit of a stretch. I think this is an example of how fragmented media and experience has become.

Selling millions of copies in impressive but there are billions of people in the world. And there is also new stuff being released all the time in the worlds of music, tv, film, books and gaming. All of this is jockeying for media attention and peoples attention.

These things were important to you as they were part of your formative years or had some emotional resonance., so it makes sense you are aware of them, but your lived experiences aren’t the same as others.

For example, I’m a gamer, I’ve heard to Trine but never played it.12,000 reviews on Steam is pretty impressive. But its a 16 year old game and when it comes to older games there are huge titles like Skyrim or GTAV that dominate attention still from that eraor earlier.

The Road to Perdition is a decent film but have a look at a list of Oscar winners - how many have you actually seen? The Oscars isn’t representative of films that were widely popular but rather films that were popular or important to people on Hollywood itself, or to the movie makers. It won one Oscar for cinematography.

And it grossed $180m - not bad but if you look a box office mojo the top 3 films in 2002 were Lord of the Rings 2 towers, Harry Potter and Spiderman. Road to Perdition was the 25th biggest film of the year, and bigger films includes Gangs of New York, Catch me if you can and Minority report. It was a decent film in a year of bigger films commerically.

As for Everclear, sorry to say I’ve never heard of them. Looking them up on wikipedia, they didn’t seem to troubled the charts outside the US and Canada, and for some reason New Zealand. And they did well in the Alt Music charts but they never broke the top 10 in the popular charts. So they are a bit niche even if they were popular in their own right and did well.

All of us have different things we love or were formative for us, and even the “mainstream” that gets the attention is still really only a fraction of what’s going on.

And I’d add the nature of taste and preference is so different that the stuff that gets big and crosses over into a mega hit is either generic/inoffensive commerical slop backed up with massive marketing or rarely so extraordinarily good that it spreads through word of mouth. There are so many gems out their like Trine or Everclear but most people will never come across them. Keep spreading the word about the things you love so others can enjoy them too.

The removal of the black gradient at the bottom is a plus.

Putting the controls in their own grey capsules so they still standout is a plus.

The moving of the volume button to the right is a negative.

I dont like change just for changes sake, but in fairness some of this is a good idea and a welcome design shift. I just hopebthey move the volume button back as having on the left with the main controls is pretty widespread and common design.

And the company remains massively overvalued despite the recent falls in value. It has a long way to fall yet.

It honestly seems very unpredictable. Anecdotally the worst behaviour seems to have been at the most republican states but not exclusively.

For example the Australian who had a work visa and lived in the US for years flew in to Texas where it was arbitrarily nullified. There are plenty of stories of people crossing southern and northern borders and being detained by ICE. Thats included British, German, Australian and French cirizens that ive seen in the UK press coverage anyway.

As a US citizen you shouldnt have an issue but I’d probably travel through a major hub like JFK in New York to be safer. I wouldn’t re-enter through Republican states like Florida, Texas, nor probably Washington DCs airports. Obviously travel on your US passport.

You should he OK as a US citizen but it does look like there is a breakdown in the rule of law in the US. People imagine that means riots and the police not able to keep control, but in this case its the government and government agencies doing whatever they want and the legal system unable to stop them.

I’m a UK citizen and am not intending to travel to the US - I often cone for a major conference but having seen what happened to the French scientist who had his phone searched and then was denied entry for criticising Trump I won’t be risking it. I’m sure a lot of other UK and Europeans feel the same way.

Sadly the only 100% safe option for you is to not leave the country. Its madness as youre a US citizen but at this point things are still going through the courts and its not clear where this will stop.

Also they dont “owe” the US anything. Trump has a cretinous understanding of economics.